


i know and do not know what i am searching for

by language_escapes



Series: Chosen and Defined 'Verse [9]
Category: St Trinian's, St Trinian's (2007 2009)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, POV Female Character, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-21
Updated: 2011-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-15 20:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it comes to leaving, Roxy is an expert. That doesn't mean she always wants to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know and do not know what i am searching for

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: non-explicit sex between seventeen-year-olds and mentions of sex between consenting minors. If you feel there should be additional warnings, please let me know.
> 
> Title from "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff" by Adrienne Rich.

She leaves, of course.

St. Trinian’s is a wonderful school, but Roxy… she doesn’t _do_ school, as she’d told everyone when she’d first arrived. She’s left three of her own free will, been expelled from two. St. Trinian’s might be the one she misses.

That doesn’t stop her, though.

She stays for a while, longer than she’d planned. After foiling AD1 and Sir Pomfrey, Roxy can’t help but stay. There are so many things to stay for. Miss Fritton is the only headmistress she has ever met that genuinely tries to understand her girls. The classes are actually interesting, even to an unrepentant slacker like Roxy. No one calls her a slut, or a slag, or a whore. No one says, “Can’t you just be happy with what you have?” because it seems that they’re all searching for just a little bit more out of life. She can sing and play her guitar as much as she wants, and no one thinks it strange. There is adventure to be found at St. Trinian’s, and Roxy likes a good mystery, a good adventure, and St. Trinian’s offers it to her on an almost weekly basis. It makes her adrenaline pump, leaves her breathless and gasping for more.

And Annabelle. Annabelle leaves her breathless and gasping for more, too.

She isn’t very interested in the Head Girl when they meet, because Roxy can spot a goody two shoes a mile away, and she hates the sort that cozy up to the administration. Annabelle isn’t even particularly good at it, and Roxy hates mediocrity even more. She’s timid, and lacks confidence, and looks uncomfortable in her own skin, and the thing that Roxy hates most is a person who doesn’t know who they are. So she rolls her eyes, sneers, and starts eyeing some Posh-Totty as a potential shag, until Annabelle leads an army against invaders without stopping to think about it. Roxy has to reevaluate after that. She gives her up as a lost cause after the cemetery fiasco, and then Annabelle turns around and breaks into a high security vault without blinking. Roxy pauses, reconsiders. She throws her hands up in the air with disgust when Annabelle just hands over the Shakespeare manuscript, and is _done_ with her, but then Annabelle leads them back through the labyrinth underneath the Globe, contacts Celia, and then they’re on a fucking _pirate ship_ , and Roxy throws her hands in the air again because it’s obvious she’s never going to figure out Annabelle Fritton, Head Girl.

That, more than anything, makes her enticing.

Roxy doesn’t study for classes, but she does do research. She asks around about Annabelle and is surprised to find that everyone is rather tight-lipped about her. In a school that is fuelled by gossip, Roxy can’t help but find that… curious. Finally, she sits Chelsea down, offers to buy her something Gucci, and Chelsea unbends long enough to say, “Mess with Annabelle and you mess with Kelly. And that, Roxy, gets messy.”

That doesn’t tell her much, but it’s more than anyone else will tell her, so Roxy takes it and buys her a Gucci purse.

She figures Kelly is Annabelle’s girlfriend, which makes sense, considering how fast Kelly showed up when Annabelle needed her. She hadn’t thought much about the older girl, other than to note that Kelly rocked the all black look better than most of the Emos at St. Trinian’s, but she tries to think back to the woman’s brief visit. Kelly was confident, quick with a smile, intelligent, and obviously well-loved. Roxy envies her a bit for that, but she really can’t complain. She’s never stayed anywhere long enough for people to like her, let alone love her. Her numerous exes don’t count. They’d all loved pieces of her. But only pieces.

Finally, she decides that insecurity is more Annabelle’s thing than hers, and settles for grabbing Annabelle, yanking her into a closet, and kissing her. Roxy has always been a little impulsive.

Annabelle kisses her back, though, and shoves her leg between Roxy’s thighs and her hands into Roxy’s hair, and apparently Annabelle isn’t all that insecure about sex. Go figure.

Roxy pulls back long enough to ask, “What about Kelly?” and immediately hates herself, because Annabelle has a fantastic body, and she’s about to be fucked while in a closet, nestled between mops. She really doesn’t want to spoil that.

Annabelle smiles prettily at her and then looks at a spot above Roxy’s left shoulder. “We aren’t together. Me being here and her being… everywhere else, and all.”

There’s a story there, Roxy knows, but Annabelle starts kissing up her neck, occasionally nipping at her pulse, and she’s momentarily derailed. When Annabelle shoves Roxy’s skirt down, Roxy grabs her wrist and looks at her. “Do you still love her?”

She doesn’t bother to ask if she did to begin with. Annabelle is so obvious.

Annabelle raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow- Roxy is beginning to recognize the work of the Posh-Totties- and smirks. “Do you really care?”

“Point,” Roxy admits, and from there her words are rather unintelligible.

They don’t talk about it, for the most part. Annabelle grabs her between classes for quick shags in incredibly improbable places (on the window washer’s platform just outside the teacher’s lounge is probably her favorite), and when they’re done, she carefully reapplies her makeup, kisses Roxy, and disappears to do whatever it is a Head Girl does. Scold people, probably. Roxy doesn’t mind. She’s used to people loving pieces of her, and this is the piece of her that people love most.

But Annabelle isn’t predictable, and Roxy is eating dinner alone, like she usually does, when Annabelle sits down across from her, smiles, and asks her about her day. They talk for a while, and Roxy is used to this, getting the casual things out of the way, all the better for a meaningless shag later, but then Annabelle says, “You’re failing geometry, I noticed.”

“So?” Roxy grunts.

“So we’re going to fix that,” Annabelle says.

Somehow, they start studying together. Roxy doesn’t understand this at all, especially since the study sessions end in sex only about half the time, but she works with it. Annabelle refuses to let her weasel out of it, doesn’t pass her off to some Geek, and acts genuinely excited when Roxy gets an 85% on her next geometry test, a personal best. She wonders what the game is, why Annabelle is acting like she actually cares, but she isn’t going to stop her. She keeps the test rather than throwing it away like the rest.

It’s only a month into school and Roxy is already feeling bored, so she starts gigging at the local pub, only a mile or two down the road from St. Trinian’s. She doesn’t tell anyone, because no one would care, but one night when she’s playing she looks out in the audience and sees Annabelle sitting there, grinning brightly. She plays the wrong chord in surprise, cringes, and focuses on what’s important.

She winds up taking her break twenty minutes earlier than usual and strolls up to Annabelle, frowning. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

Annabelle sips her drink and leans up to kiss her, quickly. “Lucy told me you were playing here. I wanted to come and see.”

Roxy carefully ignores the fact that Lucy somehow knows about her gigs, and crosses her arms. “Why?”

“Because you’re my girlfriend, and I wanted to cheer you on,” Annabelle says, sounding baffled. “You’re quite good, you know.”

She had known, actually, because Roxy has never seen the point of modesty, but she hadn’t known they were girlfriends. She thought they were just fuck buddies, that Annabelle was just relieving some sexual tension. She certainly hadn’t minded- she’s seventeen, why the hell would she mind?- but this is… different.

“Girlfriend?” she asks.

Annabelle looks nervous. “Yes, Roxy. It’s the traditional term for people in a relationship.”

She shifts awkwardly. “I thought we were just- you know. That you just wanted to fuck around.” She isn’t embarrassed, she isn’t. Roxy doesn’t do embarrassed, just like she doesn’t do modesty or insecurity or school. She’s confused as hell, though.

“Well,” Annabelle says, nervousness vanishing as she stands, wrapping her arms around Roxy’s shoulders and pulling her closer, “I don’t deny that I like fucking around. But I also like studying with you, and eating dinner with you, and talking with you. Which would seem to mean-”

“Girlfriends,” Roxy finishes, and Annabelle nods. “Oh.”

“I don’t do casual sex,” Annabelle says, and kisses Roxy.

She doesn’t finish her set that night.

Roxy has had seventeen partners since she was fourteen. They were all good, in their own way, but none of them had ever been serious. The closest was probably Anthony. She taught him how to play guitar, how to roll on a condom, and how to ditch school without getting caught. He’d taught her how to drive, how to sing on key, and how to break someone’s heart. Annabelle is serious, though, she realizes. Roxy ditches class in order to pick wildflowers for her. She takes her out dancing. She _writes songs_ about her, even performs them, and it’s so sappy that Roxy wants to gag, but she can’t stop writing them. Roxy holds her hand in the hallway, and holds back her hair when Annabelle drinks too much at a party and winds up puking for almost an hour. She holds her when she sleeps, spooned up against her, and Roxy has never actually spent the night with any of her previous seventeen. She never was interested in figuring out where all the arms and legs went to sleep comfortably, in waking up in the morning to bad breath and sleep crusted eyes. It never seemed important. It’s important now.

She stands by Annabelle’s side as she leads them through minor school crisis after minor school crisis, Chelsea on her other side. Annabelle isn’t a natural leader, and needs encouragement and advice; Roxy can’t imagine leaving her alone to that, or letting someone else do it, so she ignores the fact that she used to try to close schools, not keep them open.

Annabelle is a good girlfriend, too. She cares about Roxy’s opinions, and her feelings, and listens to her rant and rave about whatever has her irritated from one moment to the next. She goes out of her way to make Roxy laugh, and she has a feeling that Annabelle, being a little too serious about _everything_ , has never tried to make anyone laugh in her life. She has a school of two hundred girls demanding her attention, but she never fails to make time for Roxy, just for talking, or walking, or sex, or whatever they want, the two of them, together. Annabelle insists that Roxy hang out with her when she’s with her friends, and so Roxy finds herself with friends as well, Zoe and Bianca and Lucy and Chelsea and Celia, even Tania and Tara, who reduce her TNT protection fee. Suddenly, she isn’t alone all the time.

Roxy lets it all happen and knows that it will never be enough. And it isn’t.

She starts feeling the tug after two and half months at St. Trinian’s. The desire to _go_. Just pack up and walk out and find something new. A new place, a new adventure, a new story for her life. She tries to ignore it. Roxy has lived with wanderlust since she was six and ran away for the first time, and she doesn’t let it control her. But she’s never denied it, either. So she braces herself for the itchy skin, the nervous twitches, the need to move, and tries to let it go, just this once. Let St. Trinian’s be the school that changes her. Let Annabelle be the woman she keeps.

 _Just this once_ , she thinks desperately, walking circles around the school, letting her agitation out. _Just this once, let me stay._

But Roxy knows herself. The last time she tried to stay, she tore down everything around her in her desperation to get out and remain all at once. Aubrey, Jensen, and Arthur, burning wrecks of relationships; she hears that Arthur still isn’t over her, still thinks she’ll come back. Destroying her relationship with her parents, who won’t take her phone calls anymore. Car accidents, drugs, expulsion from school after beating the shit out of some girl, and then finally freedom.

She left a path of destruction when she tried to stay before. She won’t do that to St. Trinian’s. She won’t do that to Annabelle.

So she leaves, of course. Four months into the school year, and she slides out of bed in the middle of the night and carefully bags up the important things. Clothes, money, her guitar. Her test in geometry. Pictures of her and Annabelle. Her mobile. Then Roxy sits down and stares at Annabelle, sleeping soundly.

If she thinks about it, she might want to spend the rest of time with her, laughing and smiling and happy, traveling the world and holding her hand. Might want to wake up every morning to her horrible morning breath and sleepy eyes and kiss her anyway. If she thinks about it, she thinks she might love her. Might be _in_ love with her.

But sometimes, love isn’t enough.

So Roxy resolves not to think about it, slings her backpack over her shoulder, scrawls out a quick note, and disappears out the window. She crawls across the eaves and shimmies down a drainpipe, runs across the school grounds, and hauls herself up onto the gate, balancing perfectly on the top.

In the morning, Annabelle will find a note on her bedside table that reads, _Had to go. I’ll miss you. XOXO, Roxy._ It isn’t precisely what she wants to say, but it’s what she _can_ say, and it’s a miracle she found any words at all. Annabelle never pushed her for things she couldn’t say. She’ll be able to read between the lines.

Roxy balances on the top of the gate for a moment longer, and then jumps. She drops down on the other side to a new story, a new adventure, a new life. She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and starts walking.


End file.
